65 Proof

by Jack Kilborn

  “I think I’d take a few bites out of my leg or something, but I’d be afraid because I don’t know if I could stop. Especially if I tasted like strawberries, because I love strawberries, Mick. Why are they called strawberries when they don’t taste like straw? Hey, is that a T-Rex?”

  Now Mick the Mick pee-peed more than just a little. The creature before them was a deep green color, blending seamlessly into the undergrowth. Rather than scales, it was adorned with small, prickly hairs that Mick the Mick realized were thin brown feathers. Its huge nostrils flared and it snorted, causing the book’s pages to ripple.

  “I really think we should run, Mick.”

  Mick the Mick agreed. The Tyrannosaur stepped into the clearing on massive legs and reared up to its full height, over forty feet tall. Mick the Mick knew he couldn’t outrun it. But he didn’t have to. He only had to outrun Willie. He felt bad, but he had no other choice. He had to trick his best friend if he wanted to survive.

  “The T-Rex has really bad vision, Willie. If you stay very still, it won’t be able to---Willie, come back!”

  Willie had broken for the trees, moving so fast he was a blur. Mick the Mick tore after him, swatting dragonflies out of the way as he ran. Underfoot he trampled on a large brown roach, a three-toed lizard with big dewy eyes and a disproportionately large brain, and a small furry mammal with a face that looked a lot like Sal from Manny’s Meats on 23rd street, which gave a disturbingly human-like cry when its little neck snapped.

  Behind them, the T-Rex moved with the speed of a giant two-legged cat shaped like a dinosaur, snapping teeth so close to Mick the Mick that they nipped the eighteen trailing hairs of his comb-over. He chanced a look over his shoulder and saw the mouth of the animal open so wide that Mick the Mick could set up a table for four on the creature’s tongue and play Texas Hold ’em, not that he would, because that would be fucking stupid.

  Then, just as the death jaws of death were ready to close on Mick the Mick and cause terminal death, the T-Rex skidded to a halt and craned its neck skyward, peering up through the trees.

  Mick the Mick continued to sprint, stepping on a family of small furry rodents who looked a lot like the Capporellis up in 5B — so much so that he swore one even said “Fronzo!” when he broke its little furry spine — and then he smacked smack into Willie, who was standing still and staring up.

  “Willie! What the hell are you doing? We gotta move!”

  “Why, Mick? We’re not being chased anymore.”

  Mick looked back and noticed that, indeed, the thunder lizard had abandoned its pursuit, focusing instead on the sky.

  “I think it’s looking at the asteroid,” Willie said.

  Mick the Mick shot a look upward and stared at the very large flaming object that seemed to take up a quarter of the sky.

  “I don’t think it was there a minute ago,” Willie said. “I don’t pay good attention but I think I woulda noticed it, don’t you think?”

  “This ain’t good. This ain’t no good at all.”

  “Look how big it’s getting, Mick! We should hide behind some trees or something.”

  “We gotta get out of here, Willie.” Mick the Mick said, his voice high-pitched and uncomfortably girlish.

  “Feel that wind, Mick? It’s hot. I bet that thing is going a hundred miles an hour. Do you feel it?”

  “I feel it! I feel it!”

  “Do you smell fish, Mick? Hey, look! Those pink flowers that look like —”

  Willie screamed. Mick the Mick glanced over and saw his lifelong friend was playing tug of war with one of those toothy prehistoric plants, using a long red rope.

  No. Not a red rope. Those were Willie’s intestines.

  “Help me, Mick!”

  Without thinking, Mick the Mick reached out a hand and grabbed Willie’s duodenum. He squeezed, tight as he could, and Willie farted.

  “It hurts, Mick! Being disemboweled hurts!”

  A bone-shaking roar, from behind them. The T-Rex had lost interest in the asteroid and was sniffing at the newly spilled blood, his sofa-sized head only a few meters away and getting closer. Mick the Mick could smell its breath, reeking of rotten meat and bad oral hygiene and dooky.

  No, the dooky was coming from Willie. Pouring out like brown shaving cream.

  Mick the Mick released his friend’s innards and wiped his hand on Willie’s shirt. The pink flower made a pbbbthh sound and did the same, without the wiping the hand part.

  “I gotta put this stuff back in.” Willie began scooping up guts and twigs and rocks and shoving them into the gaping hole in his belly.

  Mick the Mick figured Willie was in shock, or perhaps even stupider than he’d originally surmised. He considered warning Willie about the infection he’d get from filling himself with dirt, but there were other, more pressing, matters at hand.

  The asteroid now took up most of the horizon, and the heat from it turned the sweat on Mick the Mick’s body into steam. They needed to get out of here, and fast. If only there was someplace to hide.

  Something scurried over Mick the Mick’s foot and he flinched, stomping down. Crushed under his heel was something that looked like a beaver. The animal kind. Another proto-beaver beelined around its dead companion, heading through the underbrush into…

  “It’s a hole, Willie! I think it’s a cave!”

  Mick the Mick pushed aside a large fern branch and squatted down. The hole led to a diagonalish path, dark and rocky, deep down into the earth.

  “It’s a hole, Willie! I think it’s a cave!”

  “You said that, Mick!”

  “That’s an echo, Willie! Hole must go down deep.”

  Mick the Mick watched as two more lizards, a giant mosquito, and more beaver things poured into the cave, escaping the certain extinction the asteroid promised.

  “That’s an echo, Willie! Hole must go down deep.”

  “You’re repeating yourself, Mick!”

  “I’m not repeating myself!” Mick yelled.

  “Yes you are!”

  “No I’m not!”

  “I’m not repeating myself!”

  “Yes you are!”

  “No I’m not!”

  “You just did!”

  “I’m not, Willie!”

  “I’m hurt bad, Mick!”

  “I’m not, Willie!”

  “I said I’m hurt, Mick! Not you!”

  Mick the Mick decided not to pursue this line of conversation anymore. Instead, he focused on moving the big outcropping of rock partially obscuring the cave’s entrance. If he could budge it just a foot or two, he could fit into the cave and maybe save himself.

  Mick the Mick put his shoulder to the boulder, grunting with effort. Slowly, antagonizingly slowly, it began to move.

  “You got your cell phone, Mick? You should maybe call 911 for me. Tell them to bring some stitches.”

  Just a little more. A little bit more…

  “I think my stomach just fell out. What’s a stomach look like, Mick? This looks like a kidney bean.”

  Finally, the rock broke away from the base with a satisfying crack. But rather than rolling to the side, it teetered, and then dropped down over the hole, sealing it like a manhole cover.

  Mick the Mick began to cry.

  “Do kidneys look like kidney beans, Mick?” Willie made a smacking sound. “Doesn’t taste like beans. Or kidneys. Hey, the T-Rex is back. He doesn’t look distracted no more. You think he took is medication?”

  The T-Rex opened its mouth and reared up over Mick the Mick’s head, blotting out the sky. All Mick the Mick could see was teeth and tongue and that big dangly thing that hangs in the back of the throat like a punching bag.

  “Read to him, Mick. When Nana reads to me, I go to sleep.”

  The book. They needed to escape this time period. Maybe go into the future, to before Nana baked the cake so they could stop her.

  Mick the Mick lifted the Really, Really, Really Old Ones and squinted at it. His hands shook, and his v
ision swam, and all the vowels on the page looked exactly the same and the consonants looked like pretzel sticks and the hair still left on his comb-over was starting to singe and the T-Rex’s jaws began to close and another one of those pink flowers leaned in took a big bite out of Little Mick and the Twins but he managed to sputter out:

  “OTKIN ADARAB UTAALK!”

  Another near-turd experience and then they were excreted into a room with a television and a couch and a picture window. But the television screen was embedded — or growing out of?—a toadstoollike thing that was in turn growing out of the floor. The couch looked funny, like who’d sit on that? And the picture window looked out on some kind of nightmare jungle.

  And then again, maybe not so weird.

  No, Mick the Mick thought. Weird. Very weird.

  He looked at Willie.

  And screamed.

  Or at least tried to. What came out was more like a croak.

  Because it wasn’t Willie. Not unless Willie had grown four extra eyes — two of them on stalks — and sprouted a fringe of tentacles around where he used to have a neck and shoulders. He now looked like a conical turkey croquette that had been rolled in seasoned breadcrumbs before baking and garnished with live worms after.

  The thing made noises that sounded like, “Mick, is that you?” but spoken by a turkey croquette with a mouth full of linguini.

  Stranger still, it sounded a little like Willie. Mick the Mick raised a tentacle to scratch his —

  Whoa! Tentacle?

  Well, of course a tentacle. What did he expect?

  He looked down and was surprised to see that he was encased in a breadcrumbed, worm-garnished turkey croquette. No, wait, he was a turkey croquette.

  Why did everything seem wrong, and yet simultaneously at the same time seem not wrong too?

  Just then another six-eyed, tentacle-fringed croquette glided into the room. The Willie-sounding croquette said, “Hi, Nana.” His words were much clearer now.

  Nana? Was this Willie’s Nana?

  Of course it was. Mick the Mick had known her for years.

  “There’s an unpleasant man at the door who wants to talk to you. Or else.”

  “Or else what?”

  A new voice said, “Or else you two get to eat cloacal casseroles, and guess who donates the cloacas?”

  Mick the Mick unconsciously crossed his tentacles over his cloaca. In his twenty-four years since budding, Mick the Mick had grown very attached to his cloaca. He’d miss it something awful.

  A fourth croquette had entered, followed by the two biggest croquettes Mick the Mick had ever seen. Only these weren’t turkey croquettes, these were chipped-beef croquettes. This was serious.

  The new guy sounded like Nate the Nose, but didn’t have a nose. And what was a nose anyway?

  “Oh, no,” Willie moaned. “I don’t want to eat Mick’s cloaca.”

  “I meant your own, jerk!” the newcomer barked.

  “But I have a hernia —”

  “Shaddap!”

  Mick the Mick recognized him now: Nate the Noodge, pimp, loan shark, and drug dealer. Not the sort you leant your bike to.

  Wait … what was a bike?

  “What’s up, Nate?”

  “That brick of product I gave you for delivery. I had this sudden, I dunno, bad feeling about it. A frisson of malaise and apprehension, you might say. I just hadda come by and check on it, knome sayn?”

  The brick? What brick?

  Mick the Mick had a moment of panic — he had no idea what Nate the Noodge was talking about.

  Oh, yeah. The product. Now he remembered.

  “Sure Nate, it’s right in here.”

  He led Nate to the kitchen where the brick of product lay on the big center table.

  Nate the Noodge pointed a tentacle at it. One of his guards lifted it, sniffed it, then wriggled his tentacle fringe that it was okay. Mick the Mick had expected him to nod but a nod would require a neck, and the guard didn’t have a neck. Then Mick the Mick realized he didn’t know what a neck was. Or a nod, for that matter.

  What was it with these weird thoughts, like memories, going through his head? They were like half-remembered dreams. Nightmares, more likely. Pink flowers, and giant lizards, and big rocks in the sky, and stepping on some mice that looked like a lot like the Capporellis up in 5B. Except the Capporellis lived in 4B, and looked like jellyfish. What were mice anyway? He looked at Willie to see if he was just as confused.

  Willie was playing with his cloaca.

  Nate the Noodge turned to them and said, “A’ight. Looks like my frisson of malaise and apprehension was fer naught. Yer cloacas is safe … fer now. But you don’t deliver that product like you’re apposed to and it’s casserole city, knome sayn?

  “We’ll deliver it, Nate,” Willie said. “Don’t you worry. We’ll deliver it.

  “Y’better,” Nate said, then left with his posse.

  “Where we supposed to deliver it?” Willie said when they were alone again.

  Mick the Mick kicked him in his cloaca.

  “The same place we always deliver it.”

  “Ow!” Willie was saying, rubbing his cloaca. “That hurt. You know I got a — hey, look!” He was pointing to the TV. “The Toad Whisperer is on! My favorite show!

  He settled onto the floor and stared.

  Mick the Mick hated to admit it, but he was kind of addicted to the show himself. He settled next to Willie.

  Faintly, from the kitchen, he heard Nana say, “Oh dear, I was going to bake a cake but I’m out of flour. Could one of you boys — oh, wait. Here’s some. Never mind.

  A warning glimp chugged in Mick the Mick’s brain and puckered his cloaca. Something bad was about to happen …

  What had Nate the Noodge called it? “A frisson of malaise and apprehension.” Sounded like a dessert, but Mick the Mick had gathered it meant a worried feeling like what he was having right now.

  But about what? What could go sour? The product was safe, and they were watching The Toad Whisperer. As soon as that was over, they’d go deliver it, get paid, and head on over to Madam Yoko’s for a happy ending endoplasmic reticulum massage. And maybe a cloac-job.

  The frisson of malaise and apprehension faded. Must have been another nightmare flashback.

  Soon the aroma of baking cake filled the house. Right after the show he’d snag himself a piece.

  Yes, life was good.

  If I could turn an unbiased critical eye toward my own work, I’d say the thing that makes it unique is the humor.

  My standard author bio says I used to do improv comedy. In college, I wrote and starred in a comedy play called The Caravan O’ Laughs, which was a collection of insane skits that had a few shows in Chicago and southern Illinois. I’ve always been comfortable in front of an audience, and from early on I had the kind of mind that always finds the joke in any situation.

  Comedy has its roots in the same part of our brain that responds to fear. We laugh at things that scare us, confuse us, and surprise us. We’re wired to recognize and process millions of pieces of incoming information, and when something defies our expectations, laughter is the result. An evolutionary tension breaker to help us deal with being confused.

  Most of my writing contains varying degrees of humor. I can’t help it. When I’m editing, the thing I spend the most amount of time doing is cutting jokes for the sake of the story. I hate cutting jokes, and if I snip one I’ll usually use it later in another tale. My work desk is scattered with little pieces of paper, each containing a joke, many of them awful.

  It’s a sickness, really.

  The following shorts use various forms of humor to varying degrees of success. There’s satire, and parody, and black humor, and puns, and inappropriate humor, and one-liners, and slapstick, and a lot of irony. Out of everything I’ve written, these stories have the most of me in them.

  The title, and much of the plot, is a nod to my friend Barry Eisler and his John Rain series. But this is also a sat
ire of the entire hitman sub-genre, where tough guy assassins with exotic pasts follow strict codes and kill in bizarre ways with common, everyday objects to get the job done.

  The mark knelt next to a garbage can, two hands unsuccessfully trying to plug nine holes in his face, neck, and upper body. A gambler, late in his payments, with one second-chance too many. I didn’t have all of the details.

  Rule #1: Don’t make it personal.

  Knowing too much made it personal.

  He dropped onto his face and spent a minute imitating a lawn sprinkler—a lawn sprinkler that sprayed blood and cried for his mama. I kept my distance.

  Rule #8: Don’t get all icky with the victim’s fluids.

  When all movement ceased, I moved in and planted the killing corkscrew in his left hand. In his right, I placed a bottle of 1997 Claude Chonion Merlot. His death would look like an unfortunate uncorking accident.

  Rule #2: Make it look natural.

  I ditched the latex gloves in the Dumpster and spun on my heels, practically bumping into the bum entering the mouth of the alley. Ragged clothes. A strong smell of urine. Wide eyes.

  I reached into the inner pocket of his trench coat, tugged out another pair of latex gloves.

  Rule #3: No witnesses.

  “Who’re you?” the bum asked.

  “I’m John,” I lied.

  Rule #19: Never give your real name.

  My real name was Bob. Bob Drizzle. I’m half Japanese. The other half is also Japanese. I also have a bit of Irish in me, which accounts for my red hair. Plus some Serbo-Croatian, a touch of Samoan, a dab of Nordic, a sprinkling of Cheyenne, and some Masi from my mother’s side.

  But I blend invisibly into all cultures, where I ply my unique trade. I’m a paid assassin. A paid assassin who kills people for money.

  I gave the bum a sad frown and said, “Sorry, buddy.”

  The gloves didn’t go on easy—the previous pair had left my hands sweaty, and my palms fought with the rubber. The bum watched the struggle, his stance unsteady. I considered going back to the dead gambler and retrieving the corkscrew, to make the scene look like a fight for Merlot gone deadly.

  Instead, I pulled out a pocketful of skinny balloons.